Frederick W. Franz and Biblical Hebrew

A number of
critical websites make assertions to the effect that
Frederick W. Franz, a member of the
Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses until his
death in 1992, was unable to
translate a simple verse from Hebrew into English, when
asked to do so during a court case in Scotland in 1954.

When
one man wrote to me about the above assertion,
I challenged him to prove it. He replied by
sending me a copy of Robert Hommel's article on the
subject. Hommel, however, concedes that Franz was not
asked to translate from Hebrew into English, but from
English into Hebrew. A number of other
sources, however, continue to misrepresent the facts.[1]

Franz was not asked to translate from
Hebrew into English, but from English into Hebrew - a
different matter altogether.

Now, as the court record shows, Franz refused to translate
a Bible verse from English into Hebrew. First of all, we
must agree with Stafford[2]that the fact that Franz refused to do so,
saying "No, I won't attempt to do that,"
doesn't mean that he couldn't do it. After all, his
knowledge of Hebrew or Greek was not in the slightest
relevant to the subject of the court case at hand, which
was whether Jehovah's Witnesses have the right to ordain
ministers of religion . A court is not a circus and Franz certainly
wasn't obliged to go along with some lawyer's dubious
tactics. Franz stood up for himself and refused to play
along.

At this point it is worth asking what the attorney's point
was. It should go without saying that if you have a
sentence in language A and you translate it into language
B and then someone else translates it back into language A
again, you won't necessarily end up with the sentence you
started with. Hence, asking someone to translate a text
from language B back into language A and then compare the
result with the original text really proves nothing. If
that was the lawyer's intention, he was either extremely
naive regarding how language and translation work, or he
was being disingenuous. And yet, someone ignorant of how
translation works could easily be fooled into thinking
that the rendering was defective, simply because it was
not identical with the original text. (Presumably this is
what Millard means by his observation, 'but, of course, we
have the Hebrew text of Genesis'.[3])
So the lawyer's question either revealed a lamentable lack
of understanding of translation principles on his part -
or else it was a trap. Under those circumstances, Franz
had nothing to gain by attempting to translate.

Note, also, how Hommel tries to put words into Millard's
mouth. All Millard said was that he 'saw no great problem'
in rendering the verse into Hebrew, but according to
Hommel, Millard confirms that "there is no good reason for
Franz to have refused to perform an English-to-Hebrew
translation". This is not what Millard said and, as we
have seen, leaves out other likely reasons for Franz'
refusal.

But even supposing for the sake of argument (not
conceding) that Franz was unable to translate
Genesis 2:4 from English into Hebrew, would that affect
this qualifications as a Bible translator? Is translating
from English into Hebrew the same as translating from
Hebrew into English? An important principle in translation
work is this: you work
from the foreign language into your mother
tongue. Contradicting Hommel's view that this is a
"detail", something "of little significance in determining
Franz's skill in Biblical Hebrew", The Translator's
Handbook by Morry Sofer points out:

"A distinction must be made between the
languages one translates from and into. Generally
speaking, one translates from another language into one's
own native language. This is because one is usually
intimately familiar with one's own language, while even
years of study and
experience
do not necessarily enable one to be completely at home
with an acquired language. The exceptions to this rule are
usually those people who have lived in more than one
culture, and have spoken more than one language on a
regular basis. Those may be able to translate in both
directions. There are also rare gifted individuals who
have mastered another language to such a degree that they
can go both ways. They are indeed extremely rare. Given
all of this, one should allow for the fact that while the
ability of the accomplished translator to write and speak
in the target language (i.e., one's native tongue) may be
flawless, that person may not necessarily be able to write
excellent prose or give great speeches in the source
language (i.e., the language from which one translates).
Then again, it is not necessary to be able to write and
speak well in the language one translates from, while it
is to be expected that a good translator is also a good
writer and speaker in his or her native language."[4]

What the Translator's Handbook says here is
self-evident to most people working in translation.[5]
Many people work as competent translators without being
able speak or write the source language
well. That is not to say that they can't speak it at all,
but they can't speak it flawlessly. Translating, on the
other hand, which implies understanding the text in the
source language and rendering it into the target language,
is a different matter altogether. F. W. Franz certainly
knew the difference. He had just told the court: "I
do not speak Hebrew." So, obviously, the fact
that Franz decided not to translate the verse certainly
does not prove that he was incompetent to translate Hebrew
into English and is even less relevant to the question of
whether he could translate Greek into English.

It is not necessary to be able to write
and speak well in the language that one translates from

The Translator's Handbook

In any case, as Stafford - who does know Hebrew - points
out in his book, the verse in question (Genesis 2:4) isn't
all that easy to translate. He says: "It should not be
overlooked that this verse is actually somewhat
complicated. It has no finite verb but one Niphal
infinitive construct, with suffix, and one Qal infinitive
construct"[6]Even Hommel's own star witness, Millard, recognises
that there is "uncertainty over the passage."!

Indeed, Rolf Furuli relates his own experiment with two
professors of Hebrew:

"I asked two of my colleagues who
teach Hebrew at the University of Oslo, to translate the
passage. Both had problems with the translation from
English to Hebrew, even though they both are experienced
teachers, and their results were very different."[7]

In fact, all Bible translators, not just the NWT
translators, make generous use of lexicons, grammars,
commentaries and other translation aids. Few, if any, of
them approach their work so casually
as to attempt to translate without recourse to all the
printed scholarship that is available. It
is simply not expected of a translator that he or she
should be able to work without all these aids. As
The Translator's Handbook puts it:

No translator, no matter how accomplished or well versed
in both the source and target languages, can do without
dictionaries and reference literature.[8]

Two of my colleagues who teach Hebrew at
the University of Oslo ... had problems with the translation
[of Genesis 2:4] from English to Hebrew

Rolf Furuli

So, translation
involves careful study of a wide variety of resources.
Furthermore, translation is a synergistic group effort,
in which a number of different translators contribute
their expertise and talents. Additionally, there
is no reason why the New World Translation Committee
could not have sought the input and comments of a
number of authorities on Bible languages, both inside
and outside the Jehovah's Witnesses organization.

Finally, Millard observes that 'there is a difference
between translating into a language and freely composing
in it'. He doesn't state what the difference is, but we
would submit that translating into a language is actually
more difficult. When expressing your own thoughts in a
foreign
language, if you have difficulty with a certain sentence
construction, grammatical detail or vocabulary item, you
have the option of stating matters differently. You have
the right to express your thoughts in your own words. But
when you're translating, the thoughts aren't yours. You
have the additional responsibility to faithfully represent
the original. So you are working under tighter
constraints. Translation is therefore more difficult than
freely composing in a language. And, of course,
translating verbally before an audience, without
preparation and under psychological pressure, is more
difficult still.

So, leaving aside for a moment the unresolved question of
whether Franz was even on the NWT translation committee,
my correspondent's original assertion, namely that Franz was unable
to translate a simple verse from Hebrew into English
has been demonstrated to be incorrect in all its details.

(1) Franz
was asked to translate into Hebrew not
from Hebrew into English.

(2) It
can't be proved that Franz couldn't translate the verse,
only that he didn't want to, and there are perfectly
reasonable alternative explanations for that.

(3)
It is not a simple verse, as two
teachers of Hebrew at University level had difficulty in
translating it and even Hommel's own source says that
there is 'uncertainty over the passage'.

A quick Google search shows that there are quite a few
sites still perpetuating this calumny. That should raise a
red flag for cautious readers, some of whom might like to
try an experiment: write to one or two of them and
suggesting that they correct the error? There is more than
enough evidence for them to do so. If it is just an
oversight rather than a deliberate attempt to smear Franz,
then surely they'll be happy to make a correction and
issue an apology. If, on the other hand, what they're
really up to is character assassination, then the best you
can hope for is that they'll ignore you.

The real truth is this: Witness critics
don't like Franz because he was a Jehovah's Witness. They
have deliberately misrepresented the facts about this
whole matter, slinging as much dirt as they can in Franz'
direction, hoping that some of it will stick. These are
the worst kind of gutter tactics and pretty much what we
have come to expect from many critics of the Watch Tower.
Even if we do not agree with every rendering in the
New World Translation, it is time for critics to admit
that it is not some sort of evil propaganda but rather
it's what James Parkinson calls it: "A relatively accurate
translation from another theological perspective." So how
about it? If Benjamin Kedar - quoted in the article
Hommel and the New World Translation - can admit the accuracy of the
New World Translation without becoming a Jehovah's
Witness, so can they!

[1]
For instance, Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults
(1997) page 124 asserts that F. W. Franz "admitted under
oath that he could not translate Genesis 2:4 from the
Hebrew". At the time of writing, the exact
same - entirely false - accusation was repeated on at
least 29 websites. It seems that few people
bothered to check the facts cited by Walter Martin,
until Greg Stafford published Jehovah's Witnesses
Defended, 2nd Ed., which exposed this distortion of the
truth.

[3]Millard's full reply, as quoted by
Hommel, is: "I see no great problem in rendering Genesis
2:4 from English into Hebrew, but, of course, we have
the Hebrew text of Genesis. There is a difference
between translating into a language and freely composing
in it, which, I assume, is what LaSor meant .

... I
suspect that the uncertainty over this passage arises
from the common modern view that there is a break
between the first part of the verse and the second, a
break that is made in many modern translations. Some, on
the other hand, do not see the necessity for supposing
such a break exists and the first part of the verse
introduces the rest of the chapter. The translation back
into Hebrew would depend to some extent on the English
version being used." Hommel uses ellipses,
showing that he has omitted something from Millard's
reply. Regrettably, we do not know why the
material was omitted. It is to be hoped that
Hommel has not succumbed to the temptation to quote
Millard selectively.